hello there!
i bought this pretty cool 17-inch imac desktop last week but don’t have much of a clue on how to work it, save for googling. right now i’ve got a bunch of icons on the side of the screen that pasted themselves there when i tried to watch a movie or open a document. i tried to click and open them but a message comes back saying something about needing a plug-in-play for a MIME file, or something or other. hmmm.
i would also like to know how to “refresh” but am lost there, too (or maybe these don’t need to?). it would be nice if they’d sell/provide CDs to insert that would walk a person through the functions, as right now i don’t even know how to make the screen go big so that a website covers the whole screen instead of just taking up some of the middle.
anyway, please forgive me for bothering you with this; i’ll figure things out even if i have to go to the local imac store to take a class or two. thanks for your time!
a) The “window only taking up part of the screen” thing is a feature. Windows aren’t supposed to take up your whole freaking screen unless you really need that much screen real estate to see your data. If a document window always ate up your whole screen how the heck would you ever see what you’re doing in your other apps that you’re working in at the same time? How would you ever drag-and-drop your data from one program to another, or to the Desktop? But OK, if it matters that much to you, lower right hand corner is a resize tool. Grab it with your mouse and drag it until you’ve made the window as big as you want it to be. Future browser windows will generally open to the same size as the last one you had open, so unless you (or a javascript or something) resizes a browser window smaller, that should do it for you. Silly way to work, if you ask me.
b) The little files deposited were probably designed to open within your browser window but your computer isn’t configured with the proper plug-ins to show those files in that window. Either that or the web site was designed by someone who did not obey standards and which therefore only works right with some browsers and some operating systems instead of all standards-compliant operating systems and browsers. If you’ll double-click one again and this time actually copy down the message verbatim, and also tell us what the exact file name (including file extension) actually is, you’ll get more useful information. A “mime file” (".mim"), if that’s what it is, is a binary file encoded as text, with a header that tells the OS what to do with it (the “MIME type”). Common ones that any OS and browser ought to be able to cope with include image formats like JPEG or PNG, audio formats like MP3 or WAV, and video formats such as AVI or MOV. Uncommon ones, and/or proprietary ones, may require you to download a 3rd party application or plug-in in order to be able to do anything with the little sucker.
More on window sizing - if you click the green button at top left, the window will size itself to fit the width of the website so you’re not wasting screen to display blank space.
If you are a PC person, then I would recommend this book:
Mac OS X: The Missing Manual
I bought it last month when I got my MacBook Pro and I found it quite informative, explaining many concepts of the Mac in PC terms.
If you still have PC stuff you need, read up on Boot Camp and Parallels. I love Parallels. Nothing like dragging a photo from your Mac desktop into a window running Photoshop under Windows XP and having it work.
thanks All!
i’m running late for work but just wanted to say thanks! 